LOOKING AT FAITH AN INDIAN TRAVELOGUE IN JANUARY

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Looking at faith: An Indian Travelogue

In January 2004, Mrs Chris Elliott Hall, Asia Secretary within the World Church Office of the Methodist Church in Britain and Dr Elizabeth Harris, Secretary for Inter Faith Relations for the Methodist Church, spent two and a half weeks in India looking at inter faith relations. Elizabeth Harris reflects on some of their experiences.

Amritsar: the Diocese of Amritsar

'Let people live together in England like we do. Let them live together and enjoy life as we do.'

This was what villagers in Motle, near Amritsar, said to us when we asked them what the village could teach us - two women living in England - about inter faith relations. We were in a community room, women, men and children, Christian and Sikh, shawls wrapped around our shoulders against the winter chill. 'We live together. We work together. We share each other's festivals. We pray together and not only in times of crisis,' they added.

Motle was one of three villages we visited in the Amritsar region. In each, Sikhs and Christians were working to improve their lives, together, in creative village empowerment projects sponsored by the CNI Diocese of Amritsar. They faced numerous problems, but the mood was upbeat and optimistic.

The Diocese of Amritsar employs a staff that includes Sikhs and Christians. It sponsors 'Manav Manch' (Human Platform), a forum that brings together people of all faiths to promote communal harmony and inter faith co-operation. It also employs a Sikh artist and choreographer to work with young people in the villages. A light and sound show on the life of Jesus is his current project. In the face of forces that wish to divide people on religious grounds, he has dreams of one on the Buddha or perhaps a Hindu figure. 'God is love. Love is God. Jesus preached it. Guru Nanak preached it. Most religions believe it. We must seek what can unite all faiths,' he said to me.

Ahmedabad: Saath

The issues in Ahmedabad were different, conditioned by the violent attacks on Muslims in February and March 2002 after a group of Muslims had set alight a train carrying Hindu pilgrims back from Ayodhya and the victory of the BJP in state elections at the end of the same year. We spent one afternoon with a Muslim woman working for Saath (lit. Together), a Hindu NGO founded in 1989. Our first call was to a Muslim section of Behranpura, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, where Saath had a community centre. Before 2002 it had been home to 25 Muslim families, surrounded by Hindus. Now there were five. We met a small group of Hindus and Muslims, mainly women. One Muslim had lost all her possessions in the riots. Another had seen three of his auto-rickshaws burnt. If there were more riots, could they protect each other? 'We would try,' one Hindu woman said, ' but what if they came with force, what could we do?'

In another part of Behranpura at one of Saath's pre-schools we met with Hindu and Muslim children and one of their teachers - a Christian. On one wall were pictures of a mosque, a church and a mandir, side by side, drawn by the children. We asked them whether they knew why we had come. 'Because we are Hindus, Muslims and Christians together,' one boy said immediately. We were there at Sankranti (Lohri in the Punjab; Pongal in Tamil Nadu), which, in this part of India, takes the form of a kite festival. The kites that Saath had made for the children were of white paper with these words written in black, 'We are Indian. We are of no religion' - an interesting slogan, but perhaps a necessary one, in a state where some Hindutva forces consider only Hindus, Indian.

Saath began working in Muslim areas only after the earthquake of 2002 and the riots that followed the burning of the train. Its first 'mandal' or community organisation had been in Guptanagar, a Hindu slum of Ahmedabad. After the riots, women from Guptanagar removed their tilaka, the round red mark placed on the forehead, so as not to appear threatening (Hindu women had also been involved in violence against Muslims), and started to visit Muslim areas. They still go to this day.

Fear and uncertainty surround the minorities in Gujarat, Christian and Muslim. Whether violence on the scale of 2002 could erupt again cannot be known, but it is not impossible to imagine. The signs of hope are organisations such as Saath.

Hyderabad: the Henry Martyn Institute (HMI)

Standing on the flat roof of Aman Shanthi, the HMI centre in Sultan Shahi, a part of Hyderabad where Hindu, Muslim and Dalit communities have segregated because of communal violence, we could see the Muslim houses that were attacked, just weeks before, on 6 December, 2003 - the anniversary of the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya. There were no deaths, just damage to property including the house of a newly married couple.

The HMI was founded in 1930 in Lahore as the Henry Martyn Institute for Islamic Studies. It has changed its focus over the years and now combines the academic with community development and conflict resolution. It had tried to forestall violence on December 6^th by inviting Hindus and Muslims during Ramadan to break the fast together. The Hindu, Muslim and Dalitt children who come for education at Aman Shanthi all learn English, Urdu, Telugu and Hindi (Normally Hindus learn in Telugu and Muslims in Urdu). Women across communities have made strong bonds of friendship through the centre and have courageously acted together to prevent violence at times of tension. But the trust that Aman Shanthi has helped to build is vulnerable, as the damaged houses showed.

Madurai: Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary (TTS)

Whom should we have dialogue with? Can we have dialogue with Brahmin Hindus, some of whom don't consider us truly Indian and want minorities to be at the mercy of the majority? Shouldn't human rights be inseparable from dialogue? These were the questions raised by some academics, who came together to discuss inter faith relations during our visit to TTS. Hinduism, as one of them pointed out, held within it so much diversity that it could be a model for the world of equality, tolerance and plurality. The Dalit community could be accepted as a positive part of Hinduism, with its own theology. But the forces of Hindutva seemed to be destroying this possibility. True dialogue, it seemed to them, could only happen if all partners were committed to human rights and genuine openness. With many ordinary Hindus, it was possible, but not with those who did not recognise the dignity of the Dalits or the religious plurality of India.

Questions, though, remained for us, the listeners: how, if not through dialogue, could the supporters of Hindutva come to understand the fears of India's non-Hindu religionists? And how could Christians come to understand the fears, and perhaps misconceptions, that underlie the way Hindutva supporters see the Christian and Muslim communities?

To conclude

Our journey was intense. Stories of hope and joy competed for centre stage with stories of fear and vulnerability. The hope among many of those we talked to, Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh, was that India should affirm all the religions within it as a positive strength to the nation. The fear was that this potential strength would be undermined through the actions of all those, whether Hindu, Muslim or Christian, who sought for or dreamed of uniformity of religion in India, rather than plurality.

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